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11 stories in the last 3d

The sexy AI-powered dating app scams are here

Anthropic exposed a network of roughly 28 AI-driven dating apps using autonomous personas and gig workers to defraud paying users.

Anthropic threat intelligence uncovered a fraud network of around 28 dating apps after a prepaid account sent over 100,000 Claude API requests daily, with most chats run by autonomous AI personas and no human agent. Researchers Matthew Gore-Kormanik and Anthropic's Chris Cronbaugh documented apps including Dora, Romi, and Doni, which monetize conversations via coins; gig workers were hired only to pass liveness checks and select pregenerated replies. An operations manual written in Chinese was found inside the Doni app, and Anthropic published findings in its September 2026 AI misuse report.

The Verge · AI · 23h agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

Smishing Triad Hackers Use JWR Phishing Kit to Steal Cards, OTPs and Bank Credentials

Group-IB attributes large-scale smishing using the JWR real-time phishing kit to the Smishing Triad's Outsider cluster, harvesting card data, OTPs, and bank credentials.

Group-IB attributes a large-scale SMS phishing campaign to Outsider, an operator sub-cluster within the Smishing Triad phishing-as-a-service ecosystem, using a kit dubbed JWR. The Vue 2-based platform maintains real-time WebSocket communication with operators, enabling them to adapt pages live and harvest roughly 70 PII fields, card data, PINs, OTPs, identity document images, and digital wallet credentials via a dedicated PayPal sub-funnel. Unit 42 previously tied 194,345 malicious domains across 136,933 root domains to the broader operation since January 2024. Defenders can hunt for /api/open/ endpoints, /webSocket/QT/ paths, JWR-prefixed storage artifacts, and a hard-coded WebSocket token.

GBHackersupdated · 1d agofirst · 1d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 2 sources

N0va Phishkit Targets US and EU Businesses: A New Challenge for Identity Security

N0va phishkit targets US and EU organizations with trusted-brand lures, capturing tokens via legitimate authentication flows to gain SSO access to corporate resources.

The N0va phishing kit targets organizations in government, technology, consulting, and healthcare across North America and Europe with lures impersonating Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, DocuSign, Google Drive, Dropbox, Zoom, and Adobe Sign. Victims are guided through legitimate authentication flows, including device code phishing, after which N0va captures access and refresh tokens and abuses token-exchange or device-registration mechanisms to establish SSO access. ANY.RUN tracks the campaign via a characteristic /api/verification/init URL pattern and demonstrates detection in its interactive sandbox.

The Hacker News · 1d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 2 sources3

Search results are sending people to fake Bitrefill checkouts

Scam sites impersonating Bitrefill's crypto checkout appear in search results, tricking victims into sending up to $1,990 in crypto directly to scammers.

Malwarebytes documents a cluster of lookalike domains copying Bitrefill's gift card checkout, surfaced via search engine results rather than email. Victims choose an amount up to $1,990 and pay in Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC, USDT, Solana, or Litecoin to scammer-controlled addresses, with no recourse since crypto payments are irreversible. Domains use typosquatting and Punycode/IDN homoglyph tricks, and the fake sites run commercial analytics software to measure and optimize victim conversion. Bitrefill's security team is working with takedown specialists to remove the sites.

Malwarebytes Labs · 2d agoPhishing & fraud

Hundreds of fake government websites target users in Central Asia

F6 uncovered 360+ fake government and news websites scamming Central Asians with bogus state payouts that harvest personal data and install mobile malware.

F6 researchers identified more than 360 fraudulent domains impersonating government portals and regional news outlets in Uzbekistan, Belarus and Tajikistan. Sites promise weekly payments such as 15 million Uzbek sums (about $1,300) to lure victims into submitting names and phone numbers. Scammers then call posing as personal managers, demanding fees, requesting passport scans, or directing victims to install a malicious mobile app that grants device control. The group behind the campaign is unidentified and victim counts are unknown.

The Record · 2d agoPhishing & fraud

I Hijacked a Real Artist's Spotify with AI Music. It Was Disturbingly Easynew

A journalist used DistroKid's loophole to publish an Udio-generated song on Lathe of Heaven's verified Spotify page, exposing a widespread AI music royalty scam.

A 404 Media reporter generated a punk song with Udio and, via a $3.75-per-month DistroKid account, released it under the name of Brooklyn punk band Lathe of Heaven without any identity verification by the distributor or streaming platforms. The AI-generated track appeared a day later on the band's Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music and Deezer pages, with royalties flowing to the uploader. Similar abuse has hit deceased musicians such as Blaze Foley, and Spotify says artist profiles that are not actively managed are especially vulnerable.

404 Media · 32m agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

North Korean IT Workers Pay People to Sit Through Job Interviews While They Control the Computer

Silent Push found North Korean IT workers recruiting on-camera proxies for job interviews while remotely controlling the computer, defeating identity and location checks.

Silent Push researchers engaged the "Tec Guru" persona via Discord and Telegram and assessed with moderate-to-high confidence that the operator is a North Korean IT worker recruiting on-camera proxies in the US, Europe, and Latin America for a 35/65 revenue split. During Google Meet interviews, the proxy stays on camera while the real worker supplies answers via ChatGPT-generated prompts, real-time messaging, or remote-control tools such as AnyDesk and TeamViewer. Successfully placed workers can access source code, cloud tenants, and CI/CD systems, and payments create sanctions exposure; the US, Japan, South Korea, and eight other governments issued a joint identity-verification alert on July 31, 2026.

GBHackers · 1h agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 2 sources

T-Mobile rewards points expiry texts are a phishing scam

Malwarebytes tracks an SMS phishing campaign, active since May 2026, impersonating T-Mobile rewards expiry with 1,000+ templates and 81 rotating domains to lure victims.

Malwarebytes Labs has monitored a large smishing campaign since early May 2026 that falsely claims recipients' T-Mobile Rewards points are expiring, using invented balances like 18,400 points and imminent deadlines to create urgency. Researchers identified more than 1,000 semantically similar message templates (199 scoring at least 0.95 similarity) that vary only in salutation, headline, expiry date, and point balance. The links resolve to rotating domains such as t-mobile.biktpw[.]top, with at least 81 short-lived domains observed over four months, pushing victims to fake redemption pages where they may enter credentials or payment details. Activity peaked in two large spikes and has since declined, though messages are still circulating.

Malwarebytes Labs · 3h agoPhishing & fraud in the wild

PAPERMILL Hackers Abuse Signed Notepad++ to Deploy VenomRAT in Tax Audit Attacks

PAPERMILL phishing campaign abuses a signed Notepad++ copy and tax-audit lures to deploy VenomRAT against targets in India.

JUMPSEC tracks PAPERMILL as an emerging cluster whose emails pass SPF, DKIM, and DMARC and deliver tax-audit themed disk images. The mounted image pairs a legitimately signed, renamed executable with a rogue libcurl.dll for DLL sideloading, then uses a Donut shellcode loader to run VenomRAT 6.0.3 in memory with hidden VNC, data-stealing, and file-grabbing capabilities. The loader includes anti-analysis checks and RunOnce persistence, and lures plus China-connected infrastructure overlap with the Silver Fox ecosystem, though attribution remains unconfirmed.

Cyber Security News · 1d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 2 sources

AI helps scammers build convincing antivirus renewal pages

Malwarebytes found scammers using AI to build polished fake antivirus renewal pages impersonating Avast, harvesting names, emails and phone numbers for follow-up fraud calls.

Malwarebytes analyzed a fake Avast renewal site targeting Belgian users in French, claiming a €129.99 Avast Premium Security renewal and collecting name, email address and Belgian mobile number through a cancellation form. Leftover code comments written in polite French and other stylistic clues suggest the page was generated with AI assistance, and the form was never connected to send data anywhere. The scam typically progresses to phone calls pressuring victims to install remote access software, and AI substantially lowers the barrier for producing polished, localized scam pages at scale.

Malwarebytes Labsupdated · 3h agofirst · 1d agoPhishing & fraud 2 sources

HBO Max Reddit account compromised to serve ClickFix attacks

Attackers hijacked HBO Max's verified Reddit account to run 108 ClickFix malvertising ads delivering infostealers, loaders, and crypto clippers to Windows and macOS users.

Attackers compromised the verified HBO Max Reddit account (u/hbomax) to push 108 malicious ads in a 48-hour malvertising blitz named PasteSwitch, analyzed by Hudson Rock and ADAMnetworks. The ClickFix lures directed victims to fake landing pages instructing them to paste commands into Terminal, delivering OS-targeted infostealers, malware loaders, and cryptocurrency clippers. Lures included 46 HBO Max ads, 36 fake OpenAI Codex ads, 15 fake macOS disk utilities, and 11 developer-tool ads. The AnimateClipper and ZigClipper payloads use Binance Smart Chain contracts as resilient C2 fallback, with 36 mainnet changes observed between March and July 2026; Reddit paused the ads three days after discovery and is investigating.

The Register · Securityupdated · 2d agofirst · 2d agoPhishing & fraud in the wild 7 sources